National Science Foundation Act and the National Defense Education Act on which both section 616 and the Job Corps loyalty oath requirements were patterned.

As a matter of administrative policy, all VISTA volunteers receive a national agency check and are subject to full field investigations whenever this appears warranted. This policy of course would not be affected by the changes made in the bill.

13. Expansion of the National Advisory Council

The bill (sec. 15) would expand from 14 to 20 the number of members, in addition to the Director of the Office of Economic Opportunity, who could be appointed to the National Advisory Council established under section 605 of the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964.

So many groups have demonstrated an active interest in Economic Opportunity Act programs that it has been difficult, within existing membership limitations, to structure the Advisory Council so as to assure that it will be reasonably representative. The addition of six new members, as proposed in the bill, is designated to provide the Council with a somewhat broader base without, however, making it so large as to impair its effectiveness.

14. VISTA-Authorizations for Moratorium on Student Loans to Volunteers The bill (sec. 18) contains one amendment to the National Defense Education Act of 1958 to authorize a moratorium of up to 3 years on the repayment of student loans under that act to VISTA volunteers.

A substantial proportion of volunteers in the VISTA program are expected to be individuals who have just completed, or recently completed, their college education. Some of these may have received student loans under the National Defense Education Act with repayment obligations which may be difficult for them to meet during their period of VISTA service. Four of the first sixtyeight volunteers have, for example, already inquired as to the possibility of a deferment or moratorium on repayment of such loans. The provision of the bill authorizing such moratoriums is based upon a similar provision applicable to Peace Corps volunteers.

Senator MCNAMARA. Our first witness this morning is the director of the Office of Economic Opportunity, Mr. R. Sargent Shriver. We are glad to have you here, Mr. Shriver.

STATEMENT OF R. SARGENT SHRIVER, JR., DIRECTOR, OFFICE OF ECONOMIC OPPORTUNITY

Mr. SHRIVER. Thank you, Senator.

Senator MCNAMARA. Will you identify your associates for the record, and you may proceed.

Mr. SHRIVER. Yes; thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

Seated on my left is Dr. Joseph Kershaw, who is on leave of absence working for us from his position as Provost of Williams College in Williamstown, Mass., where he is the Herbert S. Lehman Professor of Economics. Before going to Williams he was in charge of the Scientific Research Committee of the Rand Corp. in California, and he will be participating in our presentation this morning because we are focusing a great deal, with your permission, on the evaluation of research and operation.

Next to him is Don Wortman, who is in the same office. Also here in the room someplace, and I assume enroute to the front, is Don Baker, the general counsel. I don't know where he is at the minute. Also with me here today is the Director of Contracts, for example, for all of our agency, Mr. Fogelman, Deputy Director of the Job Corps, Christopher Weeks; Director of Management, Bill Kelly, and so on. In fact, I wonder if Bill Kelly will come up here, please.

This is Mr. Kelly. There on my far right is Don Baker, who is our general counsel.

Senator JAVITS. Mr. Chairman, if I may interrupt for a brief statement I wish to make.

Senator MCNAMARA. All right. If there is no objection, go right ahead, Senator.

Senator JAVITS. Mr. Chairman, these hearings mark an important phase in the Nation's war on poverty, which will soon be 1 year old. Congress deliberately limited its authorization for funding this program to 1 year so that its progress could be reviewed at this time.

Beginning a series of operations as complex as the antipoverty program necessarily takes time, and it cannot be said that the success or failure of any of its components is now demonstrated. But certain aspects of the initial phase have created considerable controversy in many communities, and it certainly is the function of the Congress to consider the complaints and amend the act to eliminate any weaknesses. As one who has supported the program from its inception, I believe the Congress has an obligation to review the act responsibly at this stage, when the administration seeks to double its size. The major issue is whether the community action program, which is the heart of the antipoverty effort, is in fact embodying the self-help principle of involving the poor themselves to the maximum extent feasible. This principle was the lesson of the juvenile delinquency demonstration projects and was to be the significant departure, in the antipoverty program, from the traditional welfare approach toward the poverty cycle. In the case of New York City's application there has been widespread criticism of the absence of self-help, both in planning and in operation. The minority staff of this subcommittee at my request studied the New York program and reported serious shortcomings in this respect. I ask unanimous consent to make part of my remarks the report from the minority staff which was issued on May 8, 1965, reporting on this subject.

Senator MCNAMARA. Without objection, it is so ordered. (The report follows:)

REPORT ON THE ANTIPOVERTY PROGRAM IN NEW YORK CITY BY THE MINORITY STAFF OF THE SENATE LABOR AND PUBLIC WELFARE COMMITTEE

INTRODUCTION.

On April 21, 1965, Senator Jacob K. Javits, the ranking minority member of the Senate Labor and Public Welfare Committee, requested the minority staff of the committee to investigate the controversy which has erupted over the administration of the planned antipoverty program in New York City. With the concurrence of the other minority members of the committee, the staff was requested to report on what, if any, amendments to the law might be indicated by the controversy and as to the efficacy with which the program is being handled in New York City.

In the subsequent 2 weeks, the three-member professional staff has conducted the requested investigation in New York City and Washington, D.C., interviewing those involved in the dispute or professionally interested in it. Among the more than 20 persons interviewed were representatives of the following: Mayor Robert F. Wagner, the New York City Antipoverty Operations Board, Congressman Adam C. Powell, the New York State Office of Economic Opportunity, the U.S. Office of Economic Opportunity, the U.S. General Accounting Office, and various social welfare organizations and neighborhood community action groups in New York City.

REPORT

At the point at which this report is being filed, the projected antipoverty program for New York City-perhaps the largest and most significant test for the war on poverty-is still in the application stage, subject to further modification in the remaining days or weeks before the Office of Economic Opportunity announces its approval and the State of New York is afforded its 30-day period for review. However, even brief investigation reveals a number of serious defects in the process by which the New York City application, particularly in regard to its $16 million community action program under title II of the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964, has arrived at its present stage, measured by the stated intent of the Congress in enacting the act.

In

The procedural defects have in several respects bred defects of substance in the plan. Some of the defects are already being remedied; some may require months or years to overcome; some may necessitate congressional redirection of the administration of the Antipoverty Act or amendment of the act itself. evaluating both the procedure and content of the New York City plan, it has been taken into consideration that the entire antipoverty operation is in its infancy-at this point, less than 9 months have elapsed since the Economic Opportunity Act became law on August 20, 1964-and that sheer size and complexity present special problems for the New York City program.

But it must also be considered that the initial period could be crucial to public acceptance of this program, which was designed expressly to deal in strikingly new ways with the "paradox of poverty in the midst of plenty in this Nation." If the methods used are neither striking nor new, but instead reflect at best only a more heavily subsidized program of traditional municipal welfare services, the promise of the act could turn out to be a cruel hoax on the poor and on the taxpayers. In the hope that this will not be the case, particularly in New York City, which will undoubtedly be looked to as a major test of the act, the following are stated as conclusions of fact and recommendations based upon this brief inquiry.

FINDINGS

1. The development of the community action portion of the New York City antipoverty application has so far failed to utilize private, local community planning resources in at least two important instances. Subsections (1) and (3) of section 202(a) of the act (Public Law 88-452) define a "community action program" as a program which "mobilizes and utilizes resources, public or private," and which is "developed, conducted, and administered with the maximum feasible participation of residents of the areas and members of the groups served." In this committee's report on the antipoverty bill (S. Rept. 1218, 88th Cong., 2d sess.), it was directed that:

"Differences in local programing are to be expected because of variations in the nature of the problems, the character of the populations, and the capacity of existing public and private organizations in the communities. Thus, as much flexibility as possible will be given communities and local organizations in developing their own programs."

2. During 1964, prior to but in anticipation of enactment of the Federal legislation, New York City created an antipoverty operations board, an 11-member body consisting of public officials of the city, which financed the development of antipoverty plans for their areas by various existing, private neighborhood groups. A 1-year planning grant, totaling approximately $225,000, was made in June 1964, in the Bedford-Stuyvesant area of Brooklyn, a low income, more than 70 percent Negro-populated section of 300,000 which was the scene of rioting during the summer of 1964. The board made the grant to Youth in Action, an organization staffed by local residents, which was created for the purpose by a federation of 70 community groups in Bedford-Stuyvesant, called the Central Brooklyn Coordinating Council. Through January 1965, Youth in Action was encouraged by the antipoverty operations board in the development of a plan for the area and was repeatedly assured that it would be the nucleus for the antipoverty program there. Yet in March, 3 months before the end of the planning year, the antipoverty operations board abruptly changed course, and its chairman, City Council President Paul R. Screvane, announced that it was proposing a plan of its own, consisting of 16 city-defined "community progress centers," including one in Bedford-Stuyvesant, and advised Youth in Action that it could, if it wished, serve a "supplementary" role to the community progress center in that area.

3. This sudden, apparent repudiation of the local planning agency in favor of a city-developed plan, has stirred a wave of resentment in the community, which observers characterize as, in general, deeply resentful of established civic authority. The result has been a series of mass meetings in which large segments of the community have been mobilized, not to participate in the city's antipoverty plan, but to oppose it as another "politically motivated maneuver of the powers-that-be." Whatever the merits of the city's plan as against the plan which the community group says it will soon have developed for itself, the city's handling of this community's considerable efforts in its own behalf has created an atmosphere of hostility which may inhibit a successful community action program there for some time. Precisely the opposite climate for the program has been created in this highly inflammable area from the self-help attitude which title II of the act was designed to foster. It should be noted that, although Youth in Action itself concedes that it had some staffing problems at one point, the city does not claim that Youth in Action is inadequate to the planning task which the city had assigned to it last June.

4. A second instance has, to a lesser extent, also generated community distaste for the city's plan and reduced its chances for acceptability. The Puerto Rican Forum, a broadly based, citywide federation of community and other groups, with an 80-member citizens committee, also received a planning grant from the New York City Antipoverty Operations Board in July 1964. The initial grant of $70,000 terminated in November 1964, and thereafter, through January 1965, was funded at the same rate on a month-to-month basis to the total extent of approximately $100,000. The theory underlying the establishment of the forum was that Puerto Ricans, unlike other minority groups, are so dispersed throughout New York City that only a citywide body could pool the strength of their many citywide or boroughwide community organizations. It was also based on the hypothesis, which is being tested by the Office of Economic Opportunity in American Indian and Mexican-American communities, that certain cultural groups require, and desire, the reinforcement of their own self-help programs before they wish to, and can successfully, become assimilated in the wider community. In November 1964, the forum issued its proposed Puerto Rican community development project, calling for 10 functional projects, 8 neighborhood orientation centers, and aid to 15 existing community organizations.

5. In this case, the antipoverty operations board gave no indication of its reaction to the proposed plan over a period of months, during which the Puerto Rican community's support for the forum began to dissipate because of the lack of apparent recognition. When the forum announced in February that it was going to go out of existence, the antipoverty operations board called in the forum's project director and Mr. Screvane stated that the board had changed course, would not utilize the forum as the umbrella group, or overall coordinating and funding agency, for Puerto Rican projects, and would instead include in the New York City application only parts of 3 projects out of the total of 33 proposed by the forum's plan. Again, a city-recognized and funded, indigenous planning effort was abrupty repudiated, this time not in its entirety, but in such a large part and in such a manner as to make the group believe that its effort had been substantially discredited and to create a climate of distrust in the very community which the antipoverty program was intended to draw together to the maximum extent feasible.

6. A major factor in these two failures to utilize local planning resources is the cloak of secrecy which the antipoverty operations board has thrown around the development of its application under the act. Prior to the announcement of the city's community progress center plan in March 1965, even the community groups which had received planning assistance from the city were not advised of the trend of the board's thinking on this basic element in the city's application. And even after the city's plan was unveiled in March, continuing through the period of this investigation, the text of the application itself was not available to the groups most intimately concerned with it. At least since February 1965, when the Office of Economic Opportunity issued its community action program guide, this type of secrecy is a direct violation of section 2 of part F of the guide, which requires that applicants "shall make a copy of their application available for public inspection at reasonable times." Section 2 also provides that if an applicant declines to do so, the Office of Economic Opportunity will do so. While this provision may be adequate for the large social welfare groups who can afford a trip or trips to Washington to keep abreast of the changes in the application before final approval, it is little help to a neighborhood community action group, which is likely not to be in a position to do so, particularly in areas farther from Washington than New York City. Moreover, since it presumes that an

application is already in existence, the provision is wholly inadequate to avoid the kind of sudden change in direction taken by the applicant agency in New York City before it files and announces its application. All the private agencies interviewed, both local and citywide, complained very strongly about this factor.

7. The large-scale, private social welfare agencies also have expressed serious concern about their role under the act. These agencies, with their long experience in related welfare fields and their professional staffs, can provide valuable background support to the development and administration of local activities. There is a general feeling among such groups in New York City that the OEO has not adequately defined their role and that the city has not utilized their planning resources or kept them adequately appraised of developments. At various points the large private agencies, which are formally represented on at least one existing top-level body (see par. 10 infra), have been shown the plan from time to time during its preparation, but they have been permitted to study it only under great pressure. A group of 17 prominent leaders in private social welfare underscored this point in a telegram on April 28, 1965, to Mayor Wagner requesting the circulation of copies of the city's application and calling for public hearings. 8. Related to, but apart from the specific planning failures which have been mentioned, is the structure of the city's proposed plan and the extent to which it reflects Congress intent that a community action program be "conducted and administered" as well as "developed" with the "maximum feasible participation of residents of the areas and members of the groups served." At the local level, the level of the proposed community progress centers, there appears to be no dispute about the New York City application's definition of 16 geographic areas nor about the necessity for the city to take the initiative in establishing such centers in some of those 16 areas where no coordinating group presently exists, such as apparently is the case in the Williamsburg and Brownsville sections of Brooklyn. But in the four other areas in which the city proposes to create the first of the projected 16 community progress centers, there is considerable disquiet among the respective local coordinating groups about the role proposed for them under the city's application. These involve: in East Harlem a group called Mend (Massive Economic Neighborhood Development); in South East Bronx, South East Bronx United; in South Jamaica, Queens, Quest (Queens United Educational and Social Teams); on the Lower West Side of Manhattan, Lower West Side Antipoverty Board. As explained by the antipoverty operations board's representative, the proposed plan calls for these groups to conduct studies and make recommendations to their respective local community committees, consisting of 25 to 60 people, one-third of them poor, who would in turn decide whether to recommend to the antipoverty operations board that the specific activity proposed for the community progress center be submitted to the Office of Economic Opportunity for funding. The primary function of the centers, at least initially, before such additional programs had filtered up to the Federal level and down again to the local level, would be to provide a single, neighborhood site for the coordination, by city appointees, of traditional city welfare functions and for such additional governmental training functions as, for example, serving as an intake center for the Neighborhood Youth Corps.

9. The role of the local coordinating group in this plan is clearly a narrow, secondary one. If the particular coordinating group is already a viable operating agency which has the confidence and acceptance of the poor in its area, this is certainly an inadequate role for it, even under the loose existing congressional directive of "maximum feasible participation." If the group is none of these things, the role may be a reasonable one as contrasted with the primary initiative to be taken by the city. But the New York City plan, so far as can be determined, has not been developed in the light of these factors, and it would appear that all sections-with the one exception of the central Harlem area, in which HARYOU-ACT will continue to be the primary agency, are to be treated alike, with the minimum feasible participation of such groups, at least for a considerable period of time. Had the process of developing the plan included the coordinating groups affected, more likely these factors and differences would have been taken into consideration. It should be noted, however, that the representatives of the anti-poverty operations board do not now deny that its plan represents a sharp change in philosophy, away from the HARYOU-ACT concept of a private, local coordinating group as the umbrella organization for the funding of the projects within its geographic area. The reasons given for this are: (1) Coordinating of city welfare and training functions is central to the program and can only be achieved legally by a city-controlled agency; (2) the board was unfavorably impressed by the difficulties which Mobilization for Youth experienced and, concededly, overcame in 1965; and (3) such a group